Members of the Parliament of Montenegro went on summer break yesterday after four months of the spring session, during which we saw some new and incredible scenes in the parliament.
The prime minister's hour was postponed or canceled four times, numerous control hearings of Prime Minister Milojko Spajić as well, and the Resolution on the genocide in Jasenovac was adopted but still not published.
The opposition claims that the Parliament has been humiliated by the government and that its controlling role has been degraded, while the parliamentary majority, which has increased in the meantime, claims that the opposition is obstructing work because it is jealous of the government's successes.
The ever stronger parliamentary majority, which now numbers 53 deputies, is satisfied with the productivity of the Assembly during the spring session in the past four months.
"He will definitely go down in history as the most concrete, the most productive in the field of European integration," said Nikola Rovčanin, deputy of Democratic Montenegro.
"This session, when we got the IBAR, is basically the biggest result that the Assembly has given that we can remember in any previous period, I am very satisfied with that," said Vasilije Čarapić, MP of the Europe Now Movement (PES).
Even the opposition does not dispute that several good solutions have been adopted, however...
"If you go into the analysis, there was a huge set of laws proposed without a public discussion, ad hoc solutions, but that legislative part can get some kind of transitional evaluation," said Boris Mugoša, deputy of the Social Democrats (SD).
The government, within the framework of the media laws, and despite the opposition of the opposition and part of the civil sector, reduced the criteria for the selection of the director of Radio-Television of Montenegro (RTCG) and returned prime time advertising to the Public Service.
As for other documents, the most attention was drawn to the adoption of the Resolution on the Genocide in Jasenovac, which was voted for by the entire government, except for the minority parties, and because of which Croatia banned the President of the Assembly Andrija Mandić, Deputy Prime Minister Aleksa Bečić and MP Milan from entering the country Knežević.
To make everything even more paradoxical, the Resolution on Jasenovac has not yet been published on the website of the Assembly or in the Official Gazette, so it essentially does not exist.
Numerous questions from Televizija Vijesti to Mandić and the members of the government - why the Resolution was not published, are still unanswered.
The opposition, on the other hand, says that in recent months the control role of the parliament has been destroyed and that the Assembly has been humiliated by Mandić and Prime Minister Milojko Spajić.
"There was general anarchy in the parliament. If you have the situation that four prime ministerial hours were postponed for unjustified and non-objective reasons, that we waited for months for the control hearings of representatives of the government and the prime minister, that best tells you that the parliament did not exercise its constitutional authority to controls the work of the Government," said Andrija Nikolić, deputy of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS).
"The controlling role has been so degraded that it is indecent," Mugoša said.
The parliamentary majority blames the opposition for all this.
"There were postponements, but those postponements were always several days and the prime minister appeared and answered the deputies, and there were cancellations solely due to the actions of the opposition," Čarapić said.
For the last time, Čarapić blamed Television Vijesti for delaying the prime minister's hour, because it directly broadcasted the Economy Committee, which was long overdue, during which Prime Minister Spajić answered questions from deputies about the Europe Now 2 program.
DPS MPs prevented Spajić from answering once, and he postponed numerous control hearings for months, some because of official trips, some because of going to the Olympic Games. For Čarapić, those hearings were certainly a farce.
"These were not hearings that had any point, but rather some politicking, and they were held in the end," said Čarapić.
Rovčanin is even more direct and thinks that the opposition puts the blame on the majority by talking about the procedure.
"Given the results achieved by the parliamentary majority, the opposition's hands are practically tied, they are cornered," said Rovčanin.
Although the regular autumn session of the Assembly begins on October 1, the deputies will not rest until then, but on August 16 they will elect the fourth vice-president of the parliament from the government - Mirsad Nurković from the Bosniak Party.
In order for the opposition to get the right to one vice-president, the Rules of Procedure will have to be changed, and then we may have to insert additional chairs for the leadership of the parliament in addition to the most cumbersome Government.
Bonus video:
